Making good on previous threats, former President Donald Trump has endorsed Kelly Tshibaka, a former official in the Gov. Mike Dunleavy administration, in her challenge against Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“Lisa Murkowski is bad for Alaska,”Trump said in a statement last Friday. “Murkowski has got to go!”
The Republican senator, whose term expires next year, has not announced her reelection decision.
Murkowski angered Trump when she voted for the Senate to convict him of inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Tshibaka, Dunleavy’s former Alaska Department of Administration commissioner, is promoting herself as a strict conservative and strong supporter of Trump, who won in Alaska in 2016 and 2020. In April, three months after President Joe Biden was sworn into office and after every court challenge against the election had failed, Tshibaka told CNN: “We don’t know the outcome of the 2020 election.”
The challenger is constructing a campaign built on Trump connections. CNN reported she has hired a political consulting firm run by Trump’s top 2020 strategists. Alaska political operative Mary Ann Pruitt, who worked for the Dunleavy administration, is also advising Tshibaka’s bid.
“Kelly Tshibaka … is a fighter who stands for Alaska values and America first,”Trump said. “She has my complete and total endorsement!”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, is backing Murkowski, who entered the Senate in 2002.
If she decides to seek reelection, Murkowski could benefit from a new, less-partisan system approved by Alaskans in 2020 that eliminates political party primaries and has all candidates run in the same primary, whittling down the field to the top four vote-getters regardless of their party.
The top four will face off in the general election, where voters will rank their choices. If no candidate wins 50% plus one of the vote as the No. 1 choice, ballots cast for the last-place finisher of the four will go to their No. 2 choice until a candidate comes out on top as the best choice among a majority of voters.
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